Chapter 38: THE MINOR EXHIBITION

Georgia

I froze on the ice for the first time in my life, and it had nothing to do with my body.

Mollie decided, with less than a day’s notice, to extend her trip and attend Rosethorne’s minor exhibition, some small end-of-month showcase the skating program put on for parents and faculty. It carried low stakes by any real competitive measure, but apparently it mattered enough that she rearranged her entire flight schedule around it. She texted me the news Friday morning, framing it as generosity rather than imposition, each word calibrated to sound like a gift I should feel grateful for. I read the message three times before setting the phone down. A familiar knot tightened in my stomach, one I recognized from years of championships and galas and every performance that came with an audience of one who mattered more than all the judges combined.

*She isn’t here for me. She’s here to grade me.*

The Fang wore its own kind of costume by the time evening arrived, string lights looped along the boards, a modest crowd of parents and students filling the lower rows of seating. The air smelled like cocoa and cold metal, laughter drifting up from the stands in a way that almost made the place feel ordinary. I caught sight of Mollie almost immediately, seated near the front with her coat still on, spine straight as a blade, already watching the ice with the same evaluative focus she brought to everything, as though she were grading the building itself before I’d even stepped onto it.

During warm-up, I noticed the twins watching me from across the rink, not with their usual detached amusement but something closer to scrutiny, tracking my every stroke like they were cataloguing something. Bella said nothing to Bianca, and Bianca said nothing back, yet their attention never quite left me, even as they ran through their own drills.

*Probably nothing,* I told myself, pushing the thought aside as I skated to the boards to wait my turn. *Some private joke I’m not part of.*

The Bellamy twins skated first, and even watching from the sidelines, I couldn’t deny how flawless they were. Identical in every movement, perfectly synchronized, their jumps landed with an effortless, unnatural precision that drew steady applause from the crowd. There was something almost too clean about it, too controlled, the same unnerving grace I’d noticed in them from the very first day, though tonight it read more like performance than anything unsettling. I held my breath without meaning to, waiting for a crack in the illusion that never came.

Then my name was called.

I stepped onto the ice, and the second my blades touched down, I froze.

Not literally, not physically. My body still moved, still carried me toward center ice the way it was supposed to. But something inside me locked up entirely, my mind going suddenly, terrifyingly blank, every practiced element of my program dissolving into nothing the moment I caught sight of Mollie’s face in the crowd, watching, assessing, already building whatever critique she planned to deliver before I’d even attempted a single jump. My hands went cold inside my gloves. My heartbeat climbed into my throat.

*Move. Just move.*

I’d never frozen like this before. Not from injury, not from nerves. My knee was fine. This was something else entirely, the crushing, familiar weight of being watched and measured and found wanting, dragging me back to a hundred rinks before this one.

The music started. I didn’t move.

Seconds stretched out, agonizing, the crowd’s polite anticipation shifting into something more uncertain. Someone coughed. A chair creaked. I caught Mollie’s expression from across the rink, already tightening into disappointment before I’d even failed at anything specific, and for one terrible moment I felt twelve years old again, standing on a different sheet of ice with the exact same woman watching.

Something in me finally broke loose.

I stopped thinking about the choreography. I stopped thinking about Mollie, or scores, or what any of this was supposed to prove. I just moved, my body finally catching up with the music, and somewhere in that first turn something shifted entirely, some old, practiced instinct taking over that had nothing to do with performing for anyone in these stands.

*This ice is mine. Not hers.*

I skated for myself.

The program unfolded clean and sharp, my jumps landing with a precision I didn’t know I still had access to after the freeze, my body moving with a freedom that had nothing to do with technical perfection and everything to do with simply letting go. I chained into my hardest combination without hesitation, without fear, and landed it exactly the way I had that very first solo session on this ice, pure and uncontaminated joy driving every motion. Somewhere in the middle of it, I started smiling, and I didn’t even notice I was doing it until my cheeks began to ache.

By the time I finished, breathless, the final pose held steady, the entire rink had gone silent.

It wasn’t an ordinary silence. It was the kind that settled over a room when something real had just happened, something undeniable, the kind of silence that meant everyone watching had just witnessed proof of something they couldn’t quite name. My lungs burned. My legs shook beneath me, equal parts exhaustion and adrenaline. Then the applause broke, loud and sudden, and I stood there at center ice, chest heaving, feeling more like myself than I had in months.

I didn’t look at Mollie. I couldn’t, not yet, not while the moment still felt this fragile and mine, like something that might shatter the instant her judgment touched it.

I looked instead toward the rail, and that was when I saw Puck.

He gripped the metal railing with both hands, knuckles white, his whole body tense with something raw and unguarded on his face, watching me with an intensity that made my breath catch all over again. I watched, stunned, as the steel beneath his fingers visibly bent inward, curving under a grip that shouldn’t have been physically possible for any human hand, the same impossible strength I remembered from the bent handprints in this very rink weeks ago. There was no anger in his face, though, nothing like the coiled danger I’d come to associate with him. Just something open and helpless, like he’d been caught in the middle of feeling too much at once.

He didn’t seem to notice he was doing it. His whole focus stayed fixed on me, something fierce and proud and almost desperate in his expression, like watching me skate had undone something in him he wasn’t prepared to have undone.

*Look at me like that again,* I thought, dizzy with it, *and I won’t care what my mother thinks of anything.*

For a moment I forgot Mollie was even in the building.

Across the rink, I caught sight of the twins again.

They weren’t applauding. Bella and Bianca exchanged a look between themselves, quick and sharp, nothing warm in it at all. It was calculating, precise, Bianca’s chin tilting a fraction, Bella’s eyes narrowing in silent agreement, some decision passing between them in the space of a single glance, gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

"She’s not supposed to be able to do that," Bella murmured, tone flat and clipped, eyes never leaving me.

"I know," Bianca answered, voice low and edged with something colder than surprise. "That’s the problem."

I didn’t understand what the look meant. Not yet.

But I felt the weight of it settle over me anyway, cold and unmistakable, cutting straight through the last of my applause warmed relief, lingering there long after the ice had gone quiet again.